FYI

If you happen to have a few minutes left of your workday and you go and check the Weather.com tournament that I mentioned yesterday? And you happen to vote in the Sun bracket. And during voting, you see that your favorite song in the bracket is losing by only 1% point to the Beatles. And you get excited and start to maniacally refresh and vote again hoping to personally pull Bill Withers to the finish line. Well, after about a couple of minutes of this, the Weather Channel will send a pop-up to your screen informing you that you've "been voting too much and are now blocked for a cooling off period".

Geez. A girl can't even maniacally vote for a song without getting blocked up in here, what is the world coming to?

Another sort of March Madness

Have you voted in Weather.com's Weather Songs Tournament? It's awesome. My co-workers and I missed out on the "first games" yesterday, but we're voting hard today. I think it's kind of 70s-era heavy a little bit, but it's still fun.

Check it out here!

The Sun division could very well end up being a battle of the Beatles songs. I'm hoping for an upset though. I'd like Bill Withers "Ain't No Sunshine" to go to the Final Four. If it does get there, I'm hoping for a challenge against "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen in the Elements division.

On the other side of the bracket, we have voting going on right this very second. I'm hoping for a Final Four match-up of "Singing in the Rain" by Gene Kelly in the Rain division (the strongest division, in my opinion), and "Hot Fun in the Summertime" by Sly & The Family Stone in the Summer division (the weakest division, in my opinion).

I think, overall, this is an awesome idea, Weather people! I would like to see Gene Kelly vs. Bill Withers in the final Championship, I think. Two really good songs.

It will be interesting to see how the voting turns out.

A few of my favorite things

Eating lunch al fresco.

Skirt weather.

The fact that i miei capelli is very nearly long enough to be pulled back for the day and not have to be re-done a few times due to flyaways.

Having to get up in the middle of the night (not my favorite thing), but then getting back into still-warm sheets (my favorite thing).

NCAA brackets! (Go Mizzou.)

"Designing Women" episodes.

Dark chocolate m&ms (This is a relatively new favorite. I didn't know there were dark chocolate m&ms until over the weekend.)

Remembering old yoga poses from over a year ago and still being able to do them.

Also, still being able to bend over and touch my toes, straight-legged style.

Bath & Body Works Wallflowers home fragrances

Plato's Closet clothing store (another new personal discovery from last weekend!)

The fact that the job market for archivists and special collection librarians is beginning to look sweeter than in recent history.

Everything about this photograph is also my favorite:

Neil Gaiman

Basketball news!

Two things:

1) Mizzou are the Big 12 Tournament Champs! In their final season in the Big 12, they get to take home the tourney trophy. This is a pretty amazing Mizzou team we have this year. This time last year, I don't think anybody would have believed we'd be where we are. Coach Haith has been exactly what this team needed. I'm proud of them all and happy to see them get a slot in the NCAA tournament tomorrow. I don't care what they're seeded. I still remember the years (not so long ago) when we didn't get into the NCAA tournament at all.

Which brings me to number 2.

Remember when I said I was thinking about finding an NBA team to follow? I've got it semi-narrowed down to a couple of possibilities. I'm sure I'm super late to the game here and the LA Lakers was never a team I was going to follow for a number of reasons, chief among them being who wants to watch Jack Nicholson on the sidelines every game? That man is terrifying. But, what cinched the deal that the Lakers would not only NOT be a team I would cheer for, but have now become the one team in the NBA that I might abhor is the fact that they've hired Quin Snyder as an assistant coach. Way to sign a deal with the devil, Lakers. In all fairness, we could assume that Snyder has become less arrogant, less greasy, and less crooked since his days at the helm of Mizzou...but what MU fan can really be fair when it comes to that guy? He's slimy. And when you have to not only put up with seeing a scary Jack Nicholson, but then they throw Quin Snyder into the mix, too? No. Lakers, we have a problem. So, while I still don't have an NBA team to root for, I now have one to root against. Blech.

Come on feel the noise.

I would love to have a real jukebox in my house. Not one of the digital ones that (few) places have now, but one of the retro ones with the flip cards and things. And I'd rig it so it plays without putting money in. I'll put that on my little mental list of things I'd like to put in my dream home someday. It would be full of songs, but today I discovered exactly what the best Pandora station is for your work day: Quiet Riot radio. I promise you that if you go to Pandora and create a station around Quiet Riot, you will have a rocking workday. It's great.

This was not really that long of week, but it was full of work. My little area had a deadline this week and it was crazy busy. I kind of prefer that though. I mean, people were stressed out and sometimes kind of cranky, but I enjoy being busy (with real tasks, not busy work) rather than kind of half-busy. It was good busy and I got tons of things done and met the deadline. Feels good, eh? Si. In the not so distant future, all my civil war letters will be showcased in a very nice way on the interwebs. Someday soon I'll have to switch from my letters to newspapers. I will miss my letters. Social history is something I've always enjoyed more than other types of history and this project has been mostly focused on social history. I love it. I wish they taught the Civil War from a more social history angle. I wish the schools did a lot of things differently, and teaching history is top of the list. I think it's a bit more important than being the throwaway subject that the principals give to the coaches so they can say that they teach. But that's an argument for another day. So, I'll be moving on to newspapers soon. I have to admit to having less interest in newspapers than manuscripts, but we'll see. I'm trying to withhold judgement. I'll learn new things, which is always good. And if the content and/or process is less interesting? ...You can't win them all, I guess. 

Good news of the day: There's a bumper crop of strawberries this year, which means lower costs in the stores for the deliciousness that is strawberries and angel food cake. I really appreciate the marketing the stores do, too, by putting the angel food cake right next to the baskets of strawberries. Mmmm. I can almost taste it now...

This weekend we put our clocks forward again. It got me thinking about the seasons. I'm not really a summer person. I mean that in the sense that I don't like hot weather. Baking in the heat has never been something that's thrilled me. But, for whatever reason, I'm ready for summer this year. It's bizarre since we haven't really had much of a winter in these parts. It's been very mild. I have little flowers blooming in my flower bed. I have no idea what they are, and I didn't plant them, they've spontaneously arrived this year. They're pretty little blue flowers. Props to the wind or birds or whatever is helping my garden to grow in this adventurous way. I dig it.

(Let's begin the weekend with a pun!)

Cody the Screaming Dog

At first, I was weirded out by this, but then the longer Cody howled, the more funny it became. I can laugh because I'm not Cody's neighbor in an apartment complex.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra